


What Lies Between Love and War

by TheScottRyder



Series: Coryder Collection [3]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: AU - No Andromeda Initiative, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Minor Character Death, The Reaper War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 22:58:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14704242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheScottRyder/pseuds/TheScottRyder
Summary: Scott wishes there were something, anything really, that could help him feel like this was all worth it.He’s heard whispers about some weapon that they were building out in space to fight back against the Reapers, and of course he was always eager to listen when his superior officers brought them all new stories about the achievements of Commander Shepard and the rest of the famous Normandy crew, but at the end of the day those were just stories, and stories didn’t patch up their wounds or reload their weapons.Discontinued for now.





	What Lies Between Love and War

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a simple prompt for Scott and Cora - 'A kiss because time’s run out' - and I couldn't shake off the thought of an AU where the Andromeda Initiative never happened - or at least was delayed - and the MEA crew has instead stayed in the Milky Way galaxy to fight in the Reaper War.
> 
> This may be an AU I delve into further if it garners any real interest but as for this story it takes place near the end of Mass Effect 3, during the Battle for London. Enjoy!

\-----

Scott Ryder had never actually been to London before this.

That thought should probably be the last thing on his mind right now but it’s there anyway, and Scott can’t help but think about all the things he didn’t do when he had the chance, and all the beautiful places on Earth that he might not ever seen now. He hadn’t been born on Earth, and he’d been so eager to get as far out as possible, to see as many new worlds and meet as many new aliens as he could, and he hates that it’s only the destruction of humanity’s home planet that brings so many of them back to it, including himself and his family.

Maybe it’s better that he’d never seen this place before the Reaper’s destruction, considering that now it was nothing but a warzone. Crumbled buildings and burning wreckage surrounds them, the cracked streets are littered with the bodies of both enemies and allies, and between the thunderstorms coming in and all the smoke from the fires the sky above them is swirling black.

He can’t even imagine how Liam is taking all this, and there was no way to know because he hadn’t even seen his friend in months, and that was hopefully assuming that Liam was even still alive..

London looked like Hell on Earth, but from the news vids they’d occasionally seen Scott knew that this wasn’t even the worst of it. Some places in the world were so utterly wrecked and devoid of life that the Reapers had already moved on to new areas. It’s a terrifying thought, knowing that their world officially had so many ‘dead zones’, and he doesn’t want to think about where the casualty count of this war is at..

But Scott tries not to think about all of that because he needs to focus on the fight in front of him.

There’s sweat beading down the back of his neck and his shoulder aches from the continuous recoil of shooting his multiple guns all day but there seemed to be no end to the husks as he and his squad moved from clearing to clearing. They’d started out this morning with twenty people and now, including Scott, they were down to a single digit number.

But Macen Barro, the turian leading them, is a damn good shot and probably the most stubborn soldier that Scott had met since being deployed to London. He’d already been on Earth for personal business when the Reapers had struck and Scott knew that many of the visiting aliens had left to return to their own worlds and fight but for whatever reason Macen had chosen to stay, and Scott’s grateful for that because that turian had been the only thing between him and a painful death on more than one occasion.

“Keep it up!” Macen shouts to them as he throws a grenade across the field, and Scott watches it soar through the air for a moment before it detonates, taking out a group of husks that had all been clustered together. “Supply shuttle can’t come in if these things start swarming all over the camp!”

A muffled explosion in the distance causes a brief shudder through the ground beneath them but Scott can’t afford to wonder about that right now, since it was probably just another dreadnought going down, and he keeps shooting at the husks, once again ignoring the ache in his shoulder as he stands up long enough to throw out a singularity, and his fellows are quick to shoot down the few husks that get pulled into the spinning biotic energy.

A couple yards away, a cannibal suddenly leaps out from behind an overturned shuttle, roaring as it starts shooting at them, and Scott falls to his knees alongside his fellow soldiers, ducking down low behind their cover as the bullets keep flying overhead. It only keeps up for a few long seconds before a well-aimed shot from Macen finishes the cannibal off, and Scott and his companions get back to their feet to start shooting at the incoming enemies once more.

One of the men standing beside Scott suddenly cries out, rifle dropping from his hands as his body collapses, and Scott quickly turns towards the fallen man, reaching out to grasp his shoulder and pull him back to safety but then he stops himself because now he can see the blood rapidly pooling out from beneath the man’s mangled head.

It was Harris.. For two months Scott had been fighting alongside that man and just like that, because of a single shot from a cannibal, Harris was gone, probably dead before his body had even hit the ground.

That was it.. Now, not including himself, the entire platoon he’d originally been deployed to London with was dead.

Scott swallows down both the bile and grief threatening to rise up in his throat, and he turns his attention back to the battlefield because the husks and cannibals are still coming and there’s no time to mourn. He stays in cover as he fires his shots, trying to ignore the horrible screeching of the husks as they run right into the line of fire but it seems like it’s always echoing in his head, grating against his ears and disturbing what little sleep he manages to get.

He holds down the trigger of his rifle, taking down three more husks before the woman kneeling beside him finishes off the fourth, and he tries not to think about the fact that these husks used to be people, they might have even been some of the friends and fellow soldiers that he’d lost contact with ever since he was stationed here, and with every new name that shows up on their growing MIA list a small part of Scott hopes that those people were resting peacefully, and not the fodder of the Reapers that they’d been gunning down for months now..

“They’re thinning out!” Macen suddenly calls out, pale blue eyes skimming over the battlefield, and there are still a few scattered cannibals and husks staggering around behind the rubble in the distance but most of the enemies that Scott can see are dead. Macen rests his rifle against his shoulder, tilting his head as he listens to something being relayed through his comm-link before he looks over towards Scott and the woman beside him. “Supply shuttle’s coming in. Davies, Ryder, fall back to reinforce the camp, we’ll finish things up here!”

“Understood, sir!” Davies replies promptly, shooting down one more husk before she and Ryder get to their feet and take one of the back routes that would lead them back towards the base camp. The sounds of steady gunfire and the dying shrieks of the husks fill the air behind them, and it’s only after they get some distance between themselves and the rest of their squad that Davies looks over at him. “How you holding up, Scott?”

“No worse than you are,” Ryder replies, managing to flash Davies a smile in spite of everything going on around them, and Davies just shakes her head with a good-natured snort. “You think Macen’s really got things under control back there?”

“We saw him take out a harvester on his own three days ago and you’re really asking that?” Davies replies with a grin, stopping briefly when a few husks step into their path but between the two of them it only takes seconds to clear them out, and Scott feels her give his shoulder a quick, reassuring squeeze before they start moving again. “Macen wouldn’t dismiss us unless he was certain, kid. Now come on, that shuttle should be coming in any minute now.”

As much as they needed more ammo and fresh supplies Scott hopes that this shuttle was also willing to do some extractions too. They had at least three soldiers back at camp, all of them too wounded to get back into the fight, and if they didn’t get off of the battlefield and into a proper hospital soon-

He hears the rumbling sound seconds before a pile of debris ahead of them suddenly explodes outward, and Scott stumbles in his haste to stop running just as a hard strike from a brute’s metallic forearm hits him square in the chest, sending him flying backwards before he hits the ground hard and skids to a stop.

His shields definitely just saved him from sustaining more severe injuries but it still hurt like Hell and the blow had still knocked the air right out of him and for a second Scott can only lay there as he tries to regain his breath, chest heaving and burning from the effort.

“Ryder, get up!” Davies shouts as she backs away from the attacking brute, firing towards the creature’s head but it keeps rushing at her, letting out that deep, gurgling snarl that chills Scott to the bone, and when the gun suddenly does nothing but click when Davies pulls the trigger she quickly tosses the rifle aside, reaching for the pistol strapped to her hip instead.

Scott grips his sore stomach as he stumbles to his feet, trying to ignore the pain throbbing through his upper body before he uses a biotic throw on the brute, and it’s not enough to send it flying but it does shove the beast back a few feet, at least giving Davies enough time to put some more distance between herself and it.

“Keep going, Ryder! There’s heavy turrets around the camp, we can-” Davies starts as she turns towards Scott, but then her gaze suddenly darts past him before she gives him a bodily shove to the side, sending him back down onto the ground, and Scott looks back just as a second brute suddenly lunges forward, sinking the long claws of its metal forearm deep into Davies’ stomach before she can fire a single shot.

Scott can’t even yell her name out, can’t even breathe as the brute lifts his fellow soldier up as if she weighed nothing at all. Blood bubbles up from her mouth and her abdomen as she gasps for air, pushing uselessly against the metal hand impaling her, and with a snarl the brute swings it’s arm out again, sending Davies flying through the air until she collides with a wall of rubble, and Scott hears the dull, wet thud of her body hitting the ground.

He can see her face from here, her eyes wide and lifeless now as they stare out at nothing. Scott stares, and can’t even bring himself to move because Davies was dead. She’d just gave up her life for him while he could do nothing but watch, and right now the only thing on his mind is the memory of that one evening they’d been on guard duty together, the pair of them sharing a thermos of old soup as they exchanged stories about their families.

 _‘You really remind me of my son sometimes, Scott.. He could be such a brat,’_  she’d said to him, and she’d beamed when Scott had replied that she reminded him of his mother, ruffling his hair in such a fond, maternal way, and though they’d laughed about it right after their words had been sincere. But now she was..

A tight grip on his leg suddenly brings Scott back to the dangerous reality he was in as one of the brutes suddenly lifts him up, raising him so high that he was nearly nose-to-nose with the creature – it had a turian face, why did it have to have a fucking turian face – and Scott tries to find his strength when he sees the brute drawing it’s arm back again in a familiar manner.

 _Shit, shit..!_  He needed a barrier, or a singularity or a-!

A loud blast from a shotgun suddenly hits the brute square in the face, the sound making Scott’s ears ring but the brute drops him as it stumbles back in pain, and Scott manages to land as painlessly as he can before he gets back onto his feet, reaching for the assault rifle he’d dropped when Davies had shoved him.

“These two are mine!” a deep voice yells out and Scott barely has time to turn around before a krogan suddenly charges past him, all but tackling the brute to the ground, and Scott watches as the krogan repeatedly brings the butt of his shotgun down against the brute’s face, the loud cracking of bone and metal nearly making him flinch, before the krogan finally flips the gun back around with ease and with another loud shot the brute is dead.

“Who..?” Scott starts to ask quietly but the krogan just throws his head back in triumphant laughter – and Scott can see now that it’s actually a rather young looking krogan – before he stomps a foot down against the dead brute’s shattered head, and doesn’t bother to even acknowledge Scott as he turns and charges towards the other nearby brute.

“Take ‘em down, Grunt!”

Scott spins around to see a trio of grinning krogan approaching, all of them visibly older and more battle-scarred than the younger one, who was apparently named Grunt. The closest krogan to him, a large male with dark blue plates, looks over at Scott and seems to just stare him down for a moment before his attention shifts to the area they were in, as if he were already searching for more enemies.

Scott does the same and his eyes go from the dead brute to the living brute, though it would probably be dead soon too with the way that Grunt was currently beating it down, before finally his eyes land on the unmoving body of Davies once more.

They still don’t have the time or resources to collect all the bodies of their fallen but Scott walks over anyway, trying to keep his hands from shaking and his gaze off of her bloody wounds as he retrieves her dog tags. He’d leave word of her death with his superior officers, and see if they could get a message out to her kids when general communications were back up..

“You part of that squad fightin’ up ahead?” a gruff voice behind him asks, and it takes Scott a moment to realize that the blue-plated krogan is speaking to him. “Name’s Nakmor Drigger. We’re here to reinforce someone named Macen and secure the area so some incomin’ convoys can pass through.”

“I’m..” Scott starts before he clears his throat, standing a little straighter and tucking Davies’ tags away into one of his pockets as he faces the krogan. “Scott Ryder, part of Macen’s squad. They had the area close to secured when we left but there might’ve been more hostiles on the way.”

“Good to know,” Drigger replies with a low chuckle, gripping his hefty shotgun with an obvious eagerness as Grunt stomps over to rejoin the group, his face splattered with blood and eyes shining from the aftermath of what Scott assumed was a short but good fight for him.

“We passed under a supply shuttle coming in on the way here, so if they’re expecting you I’d get going,” Grunt says to him and with a wave of his hand Drigger and the other two krogan are marching forward, heading off in the direction that Scott and Davies had come from earlier. “Sorry about your fellow over there, but there’s too many big things coming this way to stick around and mourn. Try to keep yourself alive, kid.”

Grunt’s walking away before Scott can muster up a reply, or even point out the fact that he’s pretty sure that he was older than this Grunt is, but he just says nothing as he watches the squad of krogan retreat and it’s not until they’re out of sight that Scott realizes he hadn’t even thanked them for just saving his life.

\---

It’s another ten minutes or so before Scott makes it back to the camp, between having to fight off a few scattered husks or stopping to inspect the bodies of any allies he came across along the way, and Scott thinks that the physical and emotional ache in his chest would be a lot more manageable if at least one of the people he’d found had still been alive (or in the case of a younger civilian woman, hadn’t bled out and died in his arms only a few moments after seeing Scott and pleading for him to help her).

There are a few new people at the camp when it finally comes into view, and Scott’s surprised but also very relieved to see a familiar face among those currently unloading supplies from the shuttle. The sight of an old friend is more than welcome right now..

“Don’t mix up those ration crates!” the familiar female turian says to one of her nearby crewmates after she sets down a large box marked as medical supplies, and she doesn’t seem to notice Scott as he strides up to stand behind her. “Last thing these people need on top of everything else is another dextro meal mix-up!”

“Hey there, Sid..” Scott exhales and Sidera Nyx turns around to face him, looking surprised to see him for only a moment before she rushes forward, one of her mandibles grazing against his cheek lightly as she pulls him in to a tight but welcome embrace.

Scott leans heavily into the hug without thinking about it, letting out a deep, shuddering breath as he does so, but if Sid notices it then she doesn’t say anything. Still, she does let the hug last a little bit longer than she normally would.

“I heard you were stationed around here, but I didn’t think I’d see you!” Sid says when they finally draw back from the embrace, keeping one hand against his shoulder as she looks him over, taking in his scuffed and dirtied appearance with obvious concern. “Macen just called in, said to be expecting you and Davies when we got here. You guys run into trouble on the way?”

Scott tries to hide it but the smile he’d managed to give Sid falters at her mention of Davies, and both of them stay quiet for a long moment before Sid just sighs, nodding back at him as if his silence had been all the explanation she’d needed.

“I’m sorry, Scott..” Sid sighs, and he just nods as she gives the shoulder she was still gripping a light, comforting squeeze.

“I’ve got her tags,” Scott replies quietly, retrieving them from his pocket and holding them out towards Sid, who gives him another solemn nod as she takes them and tucks them away into one of her own pockets.

“I’ll do what I can to make sure these get back to her kids, or at least my sister will if I can’t,” Sid tells him, and she looks over the camp again before letting out a soft huff, settling a hand against her hip. “I knew it was bad all over, but... I guess this side of the city got hit a lot harder than where I’m stationed at. I haven’t seen a harvester over there all week, and then suddenly we have to sneak past half a dozen of them on the way to you.”

“Seems like they’re sticking closer to the Reapers now instead of spreading out so much,” Scott replies and both he and Sid look to their right, where they can see one of the closer Reapers in the distance, and it still looks so massive despite the fact that it had to have been at least half a mile away. Hatred and fear at the sight of the Reaper coils low in Scott’s gut and soon he has to look away from the colossal machine. “They all seem to be sticking closer together, actually, like they’re waiting for something to happen..”

“I don’t know.. I haven’t heard anything official, but then again they’ve got us running ground supplies, not messages between commanders,” Sid replies, staring out at the Reaper for another long moment before she looks over at Scott again. “Speaking of which, Macen mentioned that apparently there’s a squad of _commando_ reinforcements on the way.”

He hears the obvious emphasis in her tone and for a moment Scott’s heart beats a little faster because that meant Cora’s team was coming, he’d get to see her again, but then his excitement deflates just as quickly. He’d already seen two of his squad mates die, had seen dozens of dead bodies, had shot down so many of the Reaper’s forces, which had all been someone’s loved ones at one point, and that was just in the past few hours..

A squad of commandos could definitely turn the tide of battle, at least with the smaller hostiles that they had to face, but part of Scott just doesn’t want Cora to be here, not where so many good and capable people are dying left and right.

Knowing how powerful she is doesn’t even help to put his fears at ease. She’s so strong, and he was far more likely to die in this fight than she was, but as selfish and guilty as it makes him feel he still just wishes Cora was somewhere safe, far away from this fighting and all this death..

But even so, a smaller and more selfish part of him wants nothing more than to have her here and in his arms right now..

“Nyx, that’s the last of them,” someone calls over, and both Scott and Sid turn towards the human man that had just spoken. “Boss called in – they just got another supply of medi-gel that needs to get to one of the outer camps ASAP.”

“Wait,” Scott starts before gesturing to one of the tents set up in the far corner of the camp, “We’ve got some wounded men here, can you-?”

“Nowhere to take them. The last hospital near here got overrun by cannibals a few days ago,” the man replies promptly but not unkindly, and he does look a little more sympathetic when Scott’s expression falls. “We’ve brought enough medi-gel to get them through the next few nights, at least, and if we’re lucky we’ll be getting some more ships in soon to come get the wounded out of here.”

If they had luck on their side then none of them would be there in the first place, Scott thinks, but he keeps the thought to himself because this isn’t the supply runners faults, and there’s no point in taking anything out on them.

“Guess we’ve got people waiting for us then,” Sid says before she steps forward and pulls Scott into another hug, just as warm but shorter than the first one had been. “I gotta go, but stay safe, Scott..”

“You too Sid, and give my regards to Vetra next time you see her,” Scott replies, and Sid nods back at him before she steps away and heads back to her shuttle. Scott watches quietly as it takes off, keeps his eyes on it even as it flies off and out of sight, and he only moves from where he’d been standing when a couple of his fellow soldiers step forward to start sorting through their supply delivery.

Someone hands him a bottle of water and an MRE but Scott doesn’t know who, and he just moves to the closest available surface to sit down and take a moment to catch his breath. The water’s very refreshing but the MRE tastes like nothing as he eats it, and Scott curses himself inwardly when he suddenly feels heat start to prick at the back of his eyes.

There’s no time for him to act like this, he scolds himself. He’s in the middle of a war, a war that they’re probably still losing, and he wasn’t the only one who was going to sleep tonight with fewer friends than he’d had the day before.

But still.. Scott wishes there were something, anything really, that could help him feel like this was all worth it.

He’s heard whispers about some weapon that they were building out in space to fight back against the Reapers, and of course he was always eager to listen when his superior officers brought them all new stories about the achievements of Commander Shepard and the rest of the famous Normandy crew, but at the end of the day those were just stories, and stories didn’t patch up their wounds or reload their weapons.

He doesn’t want to feel bitter about it, because Scott knows that Commander Shepard couldn’t bring back Harris, Davies or anyone else that had been lost, and the Normandy crew couldn’t undo the catastrophic amounts of damage that the Reapers had brought to everyone’s homes, but they could all still bring the galaxy hope that they could really win this thing against the Reapers.

Scott wants to believe that they have a chance, he really does, but with every casualty they suffer, every sector of the city that gets overrun by Reaper forces, it’s becoming harder and harder to hold on to that optimism that his friends and family had always admired about him.

Sometimes he hated that optimism. Scott huffs as he suddenly recalls the first day they’d been deployed to London, when he was partnered up with another soldier named Dash, who had apparently noticed how nervous Scott was and had tried to keep his morale up by turning the incoming firefight into a game.

‘Let’s see who can kill the most husks before lunch, winner shares the next time we have dessert rations,’ Dash had suggested with a grin as they climbed out of their shuttle. Scott had agreed only because he’d seen so much death and destruction during the ride into the city, and was already desperate for some sort of distraction.

He’d actually enjoyed it, at least at first.

Dash’s kill count was at fourteen and Scott had just finished off his tenth husk when a harvester had suddenly come down on top of them, bringing a fresh wave of enemies with it, and Scott’s attempt at keeping his own morale up had died a few minutes later, along with Dash and three other soldiers.

Scott’s vision starts to blur more and he turns his head to the side, brushing the back of his hand against his eyes to try to pass the motion off as just wiping some of the dirt and sweat from his face but then he feels foolish about attempting to hide it. He could often hear cries of pain from their medical tent, and had been woken up before by the muffled sobs of one of his fellow soldiers. They’re all exhausted and scared, probably just as scared as he is, so what was he even trying to cover up?

Scott just wipes his eyes again with another shaky sigh, finishing off half the bottle of water before he eats the rest of his MRE, which is still tasteless and crumbles like dirt in his mouth but he needs the energy, needs to focus on something other than the destruction of the world around him, even if only for a few minutes.

He wonders where Cora’s ship is right now, who she’s bringing with her and if they’ve already made it to whatever landing zone they were headed towards.

His chest aches with an old longing as he thinks about her, thinks about seeing her for the first time in months. They’ve had limited contact, managed to even send a couple holo-vids to each other whenever communications were stable enough in their respective stations, but it’s just not the same as having her in front of him, where he can see her and touch her and just prove to himself that even though he’d already lost so much he still had the love of his life. He needed to see that Cora was still alive and still fighting just as hard as he was, maybe even harder. She was fighting the Reapers all over with her commando unit, after all.

God, he misses her..

_“Whatever we face, Cora, I’ll always come back to you.” Scott promises her, resting his forehead against hers, and Cora says nothing yet but she just holds him tightly, arms around his waist and pressing herself as close to him as she can. He knows that she doesn’t want to leave him any more than he wants to leave her but their duties are pulling them in different directions, for now at least, and this war won’t win itself._

_“I love you, Scott..” Cora whispers back, her voice shaking, and he returns her affection with a kiss that starts off soft but then their desperation is evident, and it’s a struggle for both of them to keep their minds clear and not lose themselves in the kiss or in each other. Scott wants nothing more than to do just that but he can’t, not now, and the warmth that Cora usually fills his chest with is overshadowed by a cold rush of sorrow._

_They finally break away from each other with soft gasps and Scott can only stare at her, taking in every little detail of the face that he’s memorized by now, and he commits the taste of her lips on his own to his mind. If memories were all they’d have of each other for some time then he’d be sure to keep them close.._

_He doesn’t want to go but eventually they hear Harris calling out to Scott because the shuttle to London is preparing to leave and their time is up. Even so, it takes them both a few more moments to actually release each other and he can feel her gaze on him the entire time as he walks away. He swallows down his fears but still feels that pull in his chest, wants nothing more than to turn around and run back to her, and it honestly takes all the strength he has to leave her._

That was the last time he’d seen her in person, and the thought that he might see her again soon is enough to keep him going, for now.

Scott finishes off his water before he gets to his feet and approaches one of the supply boxes to reload all of his guns. The cloud of grief still hangs over him, and he’s so tired but there’s no time to rest right now because the war is still raging, and in this fight a single soldier could be the difference between life and death for so many around them.

The turrets guarding the front entrance of the camp suddenly start firing, sending every able-bodied soldier into action, and Scott heaves a sigh before he throws up a biotic barrier as they get into position, ready to take on the swarm of husks rushing up from the street and towards the camp.

“Back to it then,” Scott mutters under his breath, biotics swirling as he charges towards the husks, and the fighting goes on.

\-----

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have 3 chapters planned: Scott's POV, Cora's POV, and then the reunion/finale chapter~


End file.
